New face of the bus

Driverless bus…sounds interesting?

Navya is a 100% autonomous, driverless and electric bus launched in October 2005 by Navya, a French company, which is trying to mobilize its expertise of intelligent transportation in order to answer the social, economical and sustainable challenge in the 21st Century. The bus drives up to 45 km/h.

You may question whether the bus is really safe to ride? How reliable can it be? Or can it work perfectly among different traffic conditions?

No need to worry about that. Here are two main technologies of Nayva that will make you feel more comfortable to jump on it.

1. State of the art multi-sensor technology: This function is capable of communicating between themselves and calculating data to run the decision-making process. Generally speaking, it allows Nayva to localize itself in the environment, detect the obstacles on the road and traffic signs, and communicate with the people outside the bus such as pedestrians and car drivers.

2. Electrical Energy: It consumes electrical energy and its battery can be recharged by induction. Moreover, the battery can last from 5 to 13 hours depending on the configuration and traffic condition.

Just this Spring in Switzerland, Navya has been released to run on a test basis on the real street in the old town of Sion to serve as a tourist shuttle bus at the highest tourist points in the city. The result is very appreciated and the number of the bus usage rate is really high!

SmartShuttle in Sion City, Switzerland.

Overall, this autonomous bus can be useful in an airport, amusement park or a big factory that needs shuttle service to commute. However, a few down points to this driverless-bus is the capacity to carry up to only 15 people, according to the Arma website, and it needs to follow the pre-programmed route.

But What if…

- Arma can enlarge the size of the bus to be as same as normal buses we are currently using.

- These electrical-powered buses are connected and the buses automatically run their own-generated route based on the traffic condition data to find the most cost and energy-saving journey. For example, the buses can automatically change the direction when they know that the road ahead has an accident.